Inferno (Italian: [iɱˈfɛrno]; Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's

14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno
tells the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil.
The main themes in Dante's Inferno are morality and divine justice, the soul's journey, and the
poet's vocation. Morality and divine justice: The correspondence between the sinners' actions
and their punishments in Hell indicates Dante's belief in the fairness of divine authority.
What is the moral lesson of Dante's Inferno?
The standard that evil is to be punished and good rewarded is written into the very fabric of the
Divine Comedy, and it's a standard Dante uses to measure the deeds of all men, even his own.
Moral judgments require courage, because in so judging, a man must hold himself and his own
actions to the very same standard.

DIVINE INFERNO SUMMARY

Inferno opens on the evening of Good Friday in the year 1300. Traveling through a dark
wood, Dante Alighieri has lost his path and now wanders fearfully through the forest. The sun
shines down on a mountain above him, and he attempts to climb up to it but finds his way
blocked by three beasts—a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. Frightened and helpless, Dante
returns to the dark wood. Here he encounters the ghost of Virgil, the great Roman poet, who
has come to guide Dante back to his path, to the top of the mountain. Virgil says that their path
will take them through Hell and that they will eventually reach Heaven, where Dante’s beloved
Beatrice awaits. He adds that it was Beatrice, along with two other holy women, who, seeing
Dante lost in the wood, sent Virgil to guide him.

Virgil leads Dante through the gates of Hell, marked by the haunting inscription
“abandon all hope, you who enter here” (III.7). They enter the outlying region of Hell, the Ante-
Inferno, where the souls who in life could not commit to either good or evil now must run in a
futile chase after a blank banner, day after day, while hornets bite them and worms lap their
blood. Dante witnesses their suffering with repugnance and pity. The ferryman Charon then
takes him and his guide across the river Acheron, the real border of Hell. The First Circle of Hell,
Limbo, houses pagans, including Virgil and many of the other great writers and poets of
antiquity, who died without knowing of Christ. Their souls lived in darkness. After meeting
Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, Dante continues into the Second Circle of Hell, reserved for the sin of
Lust. At the border of the Second Circle, the monster Minos lurks, assigning condemned souls
to their punishments. He curls his tail around himself a certain number of times, indicating the
number of the circle to which the soul must go. Inside the Second Circle, Dante watches as the
souls of the Lustful swirl about in a terrible storm; Dante meets Francesca, who tells him the
story of her doomed love affair with Paolo da Rimini, her husband’s brother; the relationship
has landed both in Hell.

In the Third Circle of Hell, the Gluttonous must lie in mud and endure a rain of filth and
excrement. In the Fourth Circle, the Avaricious and the Prodigal are made to charge at one
another with giant boulders. The Fifth Circle of Hell contains the river Styx, a swampy, fetid
cesspool in which the Wrathful spend eternity struggling with one another; the Sullen lie bound
beneath the Styx’s waters, choking on the mud. Dante glimpses Filippo Argenti, a former
political enemy of his, and watches in delight as other souls tear the man to pieces.

Virgil and Dante next proceed to the walls of the city of Dis, a city contained within the
larger region of Hell. The demons who guard the gates refuse to open them for Virgil, and an
angelic messenger arrives from Heaven to force the gates open before Dante. The Sixth Circle
of Hell houses the Heretics, and there Dante encounters a rival political leader named Farinata.
A deep valley leads into the First Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, where those who were
violent toward others spend eternity in a river of boiling blood. Virgil and Dante meet a group
of Centaurs, creatures who are half man, half horse. One of them, Nessus, takes them into the
Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, where they encounter those who were violent
toward themselves (the Suicides). These souls must endure eternity in the form of trees. Dante
there speaks with Pier della Vigna. Going deeper into the Seventh Circle of Hell (Third Ring), the
travelers find those who were violent toward God (the Blasphemers); Dante meets his old
patron, Brunetto Latini, walking among the souls of those who were violent toward Nature (the
Sodomites) on a desert of burning sand. They also encounter the Usurers, those who were
violent toward Art.

The monster Geryon transports Virgil and Dante across a great abyss to the Eighth Circle
of Hell, known as Malebolge, or “evil pockets” (or “pouches”); the term refers to the circle’s
division into various pockets separated by great folds of earth. In the First Pouch, the Panderers
and the Seducers receive lashings from whips; in the second, the Flatterers must lie in a river of
human feces. The Simoniacs in the Third Pouch hang upside down in baptismal fonts while their
feet burn with fire. In the Fourth Pouch are the Astrologists or Diviners, forced to walk with
their heads on backward, a sight that moves Dante to great pity. In the Fifth Pouch, the
Barrators (those who accepted bribes) steep in pitch while demons tear them apart. The
Hypocrites in the Sixth Pouch must forever walk in circles, wearing heavy robes made of lead.
Caiphas, the priest who confirmed Jesus’ death sentence, lies crucified on the ground; the other
sinners tread on him as they walk. In the horrifying Seventh Pouch, the Thieves sit trapped in a
pit of vipers, becoming vipers themselves when bitten; to regain their form, they must bite
another thief in turn.

In the Eighth Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell, Dante speaks to Ulysses, the great hero
of Homer’s epics, now doomed to an eternity among those guilty of Spiritual Theft (the False
Counselors) for his role in executing the ruse of the Trojan horse. In the Ninth Pouch, the souls
of Sowers of Scandal and Schism walk in a circle, constantly afflicted by wounds that open and
close repeatedly. In the Tenth Pouch, the Falsifiers suffer from horrible plagues and diseases.
Virgil and Dante proceed to the Ninth Circle of Hell through the Giants’ Well, which leads to a
massive drop to Cocytus, a great frozen lake. The giant Antaeus picks Virgil and Dante up and
sets them down at the bottom of the well, in the lowest region of Hell. In Caina, the First Ring
of the Ninth Circle of Hell, those who betrayed their kin stand frozen up to their necks in the
lake’s ice. In Antenora, the Second Ring, those who betrayed their country and party stand
frozen up to their heads; here Dante meets Count Ugolino, who spends eternity gnawing on the
head of the man who imprisoned him in life. In Ptolomea, the Third Ring, those who betrayed
their guests spend eternity lying on their backs in the frozen lake, their tears making blocks of
ice over their eyes. Dante next follows Virgil into Judecca, the Fourth Ring of the Ninth Circle of
Hell and the lowest depth. Here, those who betrayed their benefactors spend eternity in
complete icy submersion.

A huge, mist-shrouded form lurks ahead, and Dante approaches it. It is the three-
headed giant Lucifer, plunged waist-deep into the ice. His body pierces the center of the Earth,
where he fell when God hurled him down from Heaven. Each of Lucifer’s mouths chews one of
history’s three greatest sinners: Judas, the betrayer of Christ, and Cassius and Brutus, the
betrayers of Julius Caesar. Virgil leads Dante on a climb down Lucifer’s massive form, holding on
to his frozen tufts of hair. Eventually, the poets reach the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and
travel from there out of Hell and back onto Earth. They emerge from Hell on Easter morning,
just before sunrise.